Riding and Walking to Better Health

 (Warning: Even though I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express many times, I am not a medical professional. The following does not constitute medical advice, it is just a recounting of what I have done over the past 10 months to be more proactive with my physical and mental health.)

First, some background…

One of the things I have learned in my 72 years on this planet is “Life is tough.” Sure, there are times when life is easy but sometimes it just slams you into a wall.  Life decided to slam my head into a brick wall last Father’s Day. It hit me in the kidneys with a baseball bat and ripped a hole in my soul. Unexpectedly losing your wife on a day when family is supposed to be celebrating you is cruel and unusual punishment.

I could have just curled up in the deep hole life tossed me into.  But I’ve been called stubborn in the past. Some have even accused me of enjoying doing things the hard way. Instead, I recognized that I had too many people who needed me. I had to be strong for myself. I had to be strong for them.

Exercise for your physical, mental and emotional health.

Part of that (and now we get to the crux of this meandering) meant taking better care of myself physically. While I have been passively following my doctor’s “requests” that doesn’t mean I was doing everything I could or should have. I came to realize, I had to do more.

To be honest, the first step was a by-product of grief. I lost my appetite and was barely eating. When I did start regaining my appetite, I found that I could live without a lot of starches, so I cut back on rice and potatoes. I decided to start eating more salads.

The next thing to happen was reaching out to someone who once worked for me in the Coast Guard, he left the service, went to seminary school and became a Lutheran priest just before 9/11. He immediately joined the Army’s chaplain corps and retired last year. Anyway, he suggested I started “rucking”. I looked it up, rucking is walking 10 miles in the wilderness with 20 pounds of rocks on your back. I decided I would start walking instead.

Find a safe place to walk or ride

The point of the suggestion was that exercise is good for your body, your mental health and your soul. So, I started walking. I bought an Apple Watch to help keep track of my fitness (yes, there are other devices that can also do it and probably less expensive). I started out working a little over one mile a day. By mid-July I was doing just over two miles a day. Time wise, I went from doing a mile in over 20-minutes to 2.25 miles in 22 minutes.

Finding a safe place to walk was easy.  I like walking in Heritage Park a well maintained park with an inner (ring) that takes eight laps to make a mile. An outer ring requires only three laps to make a mile. and, if you get bored walking around in a circle, there are two “offshoots” that walkers often use to add variety. A part of the walkway is along Bayou Liberty – a nice scenic little waterway.

Find new paths to walk or ride …

I admit that I was tired of walking the same paths after six weeks. I needed a change of scenery. Driving another two or three miles took me to Camp Salmen – a former Boy Scout area turned into a parish park. There are multiple nature trails in addition to a paved biking/walking path. That path is also connected to the Tammany Trace, a 31-mile rail trail running from Slidell to Covington along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Walking the trails and the walking path gave me incentive to keep walking. Seeing people also riding along the path made me think, “I wonder if I can still ride a bike?” I mean, I used to ride a bike to and from school when I was in junior high. Me and my friends would spend hours riding our bikes around on the weekend and during the summer. My first couple of years in Seattle, I spent a lot of time riding a 10-speed up and down some of the hills and around Green Lake. (For those who don’t know, a 10-speed was what we had before they created road bikes with 21 or more gears.)

I mean, it had only been about 45 years and a back surgery since I rode a bike. Surely, I could hop on one and pick up where I left off?

That story will be in the part two…